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The Folly of Faking Fan Sites

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the "new"-media-and-"new"-marketing dept.

GFD writes "Salon has an article on what the media moguls call "internet marketing" where the film makers or the studio creates a bunch of fake amature fan sites, etc. to create buzz. " Wierd, huh? I'm equally annoyed by websites with fake personalities that run them. Like Hemos- he's really written by a team of marketroids ;) I'd like to state for the record that Rob is not Bill Gates. Honest.

3 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Slashdot by dattaway · · Score: 4

    The clues might be who's surfing your home web pages. Are they just employees of the company? I have seen many HTTP GETs for robots.txt from microsoft.com. I'm not sure if they watch me or have their own search site (I am a boring person and have nothing:)

    tide76.microsoft.com - - [20/Jun/1999:05:26:59 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317
    tide73.microsoft.com - - [21/Jun/1999:20:56:10 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317
    tide77.microsoft.com - - [21/Jun/1999:23:59:47 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 304 -
    tide72.microsoft.com - - [23/Jun/1999:14:56:47 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317
    tide76.microsoft.com - - [23/Jun/1999:20:50:39 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 304 -
    tide77.microsoft.com - - [24/Jun/1999:04:00:11 -0500] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 317

  2. Good Point, bad example. by iago · · Score: 4
    The Blair Witch Project was produced by a bunch of film students at the University of Central Florida on virtually no budget. The film has been showing around for a couple of months. For example, the film was shown at the Florida Film Festival a few months ago (Where I was fortunate enough to see it.) And it lives almost up to expectations. The official release of this film was today. What you people have to realize is that this film was an art movie and the kids who made it never really expected it go this far.

    I know several people who have made websites about this movie. They are all UCF students who have also seen the movie. They are not iflm studios or the makers of the film. If you want an example of 'astroturfing' look at DIVX, Microsoft, or Disney.

    I believe in this case, the author of the article at Salon was waiting to use this particular topic in context. Unfortunately, he picked a very, very poor example.

    iago,

    --
    Worst Sig Ever
  3. Hemos is a team of marketdroids? by kijiki · · Score: 4

    I always thought he was an AI, running on a old C64 in rob's basement, bent on world domination!